New Internet!

[Hook]

I live so far out in the boonies that I have to have a subscription for sunlight. My current Internet is via satellite, 12 Mbps with a 25 gig monthly cap with midnight to 5 AM unmetered. I can use about 1/3 of that as the rest of the family uses the rest. Speeds are throttled after the cap is exceeded or I can pay $10 per gig for additional bandwidth. I've done both in the past.

Recently I heard about a new tower being built close to my house. A couple of days ago I found out it was Nextlink Internet. Today I found out the new tower was about 1/4 mile from my house.

Nextlink offers plans with speeds of up to 100 Mbps with no data cap.

This evening I applied for service. This is gonna be like going from a bicycle to a Mercedes. For the same price I'm paying now I can get 35 Mbps or for a tiny bit more 50 Mbps. As an interesting bonus, I found a link on that site to get reduced fees for telephone and Internet because I'm a Veteran. Senendipity!

It looks like the new MSFS is within the realm of possibility, even while my wife and son stream video at the same time.

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[Medtner]

Good news, and welcome to the dark ages of the internet!


I've been blessed with an uncapped 500Mbps line of fantastic stability.
The only problem is that one gets to be spoiled. Visiting my brother with his 10Mbps line I grow restless, grumpy, and more often than not - a long grey beard.

[Hook]

I still remember fondly my first 2400 baud modem, local FidoNET BBS systems and USENET via a public unix box. We used 1200 and sometimes 300 baud at work. I also remember the first time I saw a 9600 baud *error correcting* modem and running a full screen text editor on it. It seemed like magic at the time.

By the time I got satellite my modem speeds were 50.6 and the day the satellite was installed I had 50.9. I'd previously had a fixed wireless broadband but the company went bankrupt and their bandwidth was auctioned off to a telephone provider. There has been another wireless company in the area for a year or two but it's very local, if you get my meaning. Prices for speeds are about the same but the local company doesn't offer higher than 25 Mbps and the tower isn't close. My previous dialup company offers wireless but no line of sight. (Their tower is at my local airport, F00 Bonham!)

DSL never came out quite this far. I could upgrade the satellite but it would require removing a few trees and had a 720 limit on video download speeds. At this point I'm glad I waited.

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[Paughco]

Keep on rockin' in a free world, man!

Seeya
ATB

[JJB17463rdBombGroup]

Congratulations now you're now going to be at the same Internet speeds as I am at and be satisfied.
5G will probably make our 100 Mbps service seem slow and for the budget minded but I am satisfied with it.
I opted for other useful Internet items like a couple of Amazon Echo shows,Amazon Fire TV the free Pluto TV and Tubi apps etc.
I just paid my inexpensive Internet Bill a few days ago.

[Bruce66]

Ha Ha!!

And here I am paying extra for 'Superfast' internet speeds of 14Mbs!

Mind you it is a step up from our old place where we were getting 2 Mbs - and I do NOT live in the boonies!! We were still using the telephone lines that were installed for WWII communications - top of the line, cutting edge technology that helped win the war - why would it ever need to be updated?!?!?

The sad thing is we are now in a new building estate, all fiber optic and right on the main internet highway so we SHOULD get good speeds - but No!

(I was just noticing my son's nose runs faster than my internet streaming! )

[Hook]

The installer is here now. It turns out the tower is not directly across the major trees and he's got a good signal. In other words, I won't need a separate tower.

I found out that Microsoft offers Office on physical media for a small charge, so they'll certainly offer MSFS on physical media as well. Good news for those who can't deal with a 116 gig download (current size, it'll get bigger).

My wife will be able to watch Internet TV at the same time as my son and his wife, and there may be some left over for me at 35 MBps for the connection. If not, I can go up to 100. And no 25 gig per month bandwidth cap!

Life is good.

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[Hook]

Installer just left after 6 hours. Up and running. Typical 34 MBps and no caps for a total of $133 per month, $15 cheaper than satellite at 12 MBps and a 25 gig monthly cap.

The major change I can see is having a 10-30 ms ping, which makes https handshaking go very quickly indeed. Satellite has 650 ms pings. For example, bringing up skyvector.com the map populates almost instantly where on satellite it took 10-15 seconds for the entire map to fill in. Other things happen just as quickly.

Life is good.

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[JJB17463rdBombGroup]

I had a Internet disruption with Rainier Connect having problems for a few hours about a week ago.
Fortunately so far that was a rare event
It was quite disconcerting as my home phone service is with MagicJack which is a VOIP service and I am all paid up with them for service till the year 2023.
I did it to save expensive old fashioned landline phone service monthly expenses but I also have a smartphone too (it doesn't have very reliable Internet coverage in my area but of course works great with my WiFi (If my Internet Service is working))
That particular night the only thing that I had working was of course my smartphone and my inexpensive cable TV service.

In a way I wish I had 2 ISP's just in case one had problems.

[Hook]

I had just enough time to install MSFS alpha (9 hr download) and do a 2 hour test flight. Microsoft downloaded and installed an update during that 9 hours, just needed reboot, which I did after landing.

Power on self test failed, 6 beeps indicating video problems. Gotta ship my computer to Dell for service, a couple of weeks or more.

Currently on wife's laptop... I'm glad I bought her one. At least the Internet works... so far.

<sigh>

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[Hook]

I got my old computer to come up and I'm making backups like crazy.

At least the Windows update completed normally.

I suspect a hardware error, probably in the backplane where everything plugs in.

<sigh> <again>

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[Lewis - A2A]

Ahh that sucks, but hey least the net itself is all working ok for you right?

[Hook]

Thanks, Scott. New Internet has been great. Watching all the videos I haven't been able to with satellite.

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